Opinion
Column

Revisiting old memories

I have come to realize as I hit the "middle ages" that the most precious gifts aren't the ones that come with expensive price tags. The words you choose, regardless of how innocuous you believe them to be, can leave a lasting impression, even read 40 years from the time you laid pen to paper.

As a child, visiting my grandparents meant a very specific routine. They were farmers and sundowners and every moment of the waking day was precious. Tasks were plenty and there was a time for work and a time for fooling around. My grandpa always seemed to find more time to fool around with the grandkids when we were out in the barn. Squirting us with milk from the cow's teat drew lots of squeals and shrieks. It also made us enemies with the barn cats who were waiting for their creamy treat. Grandma always had a list of chores as long as her forearm. Sometimes we could help. Sometimes we were more help if we were outside and out from under her feet. Regardless of how long the day was, it always ended with my grandma writing in her diary.

Every year, a small, brightly coloured book with some fancy trimming sat conspicuously by the sofa or on the table under the telephone. It was never clasped or locked that I recall. It was trusted that no one would dare read her private thoughts. My Gram was a writer for numerous publications and she could weave a fine story. I remember desperately wanting to know what she was writing about. I would run my fingers along the gold inlay on the cover that said "One Year Diary" when she wasn't looking. But I never cracked open the pages. I couldn't. Even though there were nights that I worried that if I had been particularly sassy, was it recorded for all time?

I asked my Gram what she planned to do with all of her diaries when she passed away. She told me to burn them. She didn't think there was anything in them that would be of interest to anyone. When she did pass away, I was too heartsick to take them at the time. I didn't know where they went or to whom. I knew my Gram didn't really want us to read them anyway.

Recently, my mom gave me a box of the diaries — only a small amount, about 10 or so. It was like finding hidden treasure that you assumed had long been claimed by the sand or the sea, never to be touched again.

I put them in chronological order, then by size, then by colour, then back in chronological order again. I smelled each one deeply, for a hint of her perfume or the way her house used to smell. For whatever reason, I was stalling. I took one to the lake with me on vacation thinking I might get around to opening it. By a softly lit lamp, while the rain poured, I carefully cracked open the first. It was 1977. I was nine. She was 63.

I could hear my Gram's voice as I read each passage. She was very concerned about the price of heating oil, the rising cost of groceries, and how the Leafs were playing. She loved my grandfather and worried about him constantly. They were raising my four-year-old cousin and found solace in square dancing and friends on the days it was particularly challenging. She baked, cleaned, gardened, visited family in nursing homes, devoted hours upon hours to her church, and wrote for the local newspapers. My grandpa managed the farm, worked full time in a grocery store and still had time to find me apples the size of my head to slice up and eat together in the living room. And at the end of almost every entry it said, "We are tired."

It was as though I was sitting in her living room again, watching her write her thoughts of the day at the big kitchen table over a dish of Shaw's Butter Brickle ice cream. It is a memory as clear to me as a sheet of new glass. And even though I sat there, on that brown sofa, with one eye on the black and white television set and the other on my grandma as she wrote, she never appeared tired. She never let on to me that she was tired. My grandpa never did either. It shouldn't have been a surprise to learn, but it was.

These tiny time capsules have connected me with a lot of history that I had forgotten about. Polio outbreaks, snowstorms, Trudeau's (the first one) escapades, and the deaths of many people, including Lawrence Welk, of whom my grandparents were tremendous fans. But mostly, it has given me a new appreciation for how hard these two people worked at life and family. It wasn't always perfect and it wasn't always pretty, but they didn't give up.

My Gram was wrong when she thought no one would be interested in her thoughts decades later. And while I still feel a little pang of disobedience for not following her wishes in burning these volumes, it isn't enough to make me regret holding on to her memories, or revisiting mine.